


Fire Escape

by philophrosynae



Series: saketini [2]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Humor, M/M, One Shot Collection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-03-09 21:24:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18925318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philophrosynae/pseuds/philophrosynae
Summary: Alfred decides to play hero.





	Fire Escape

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally for a Tumblr prompt: "I have a bad feeling about this."

“I don’t even really like that scarf,” Ivan shouted up to him.

“Didn’t your coworkers buy it for you?” Alfred called back.

“I don’t really like them either! Come down from there!”

Alfred was three floors up from the ground and still climbing. They had plans that evening to have dinner with friends. Contrary to Ivan’s words, he actually did like the coworkers they were meeting for tacos and tequila. On the walk to the trendy restaurant, an unexpected gust of wind from an alley had carried Ivan’s scarf up and onto an exposed fire escape.

Ever the hero, Alfred was scrambling up the old ladder to retrieve it. Ivan tuned out the noises from the crowded street behind them, straining his ears to hear any squeak or crack that might ring in his Alfred’s doom.

“It’s  _fine._ People are supposed to climb up and down these things. They’re made for it!”

“That one was ‘made for it’ 50 years ago!”

“You just made that up!”

It actually was a very old ladder. The neighborhood they were in had been recently “rediscovered” by a younger generation. A few years prior a fire had torn through several blocks of abandoned warehouses and other industrial buildings. Most of the companies and landlords had long abandoned the properties to time and rust, so the flames had gleefully torn through the decay. The neighborhood then found rebirth in gentrification. In the remains, many newer, trendier buildings had cropped up. What had been a warehouse district was now mostly apartments with lofted ceilings tucked beside gluten free or non-GMO restaurants. Most of what hadn’t been flattened by the fire had already been stripped down and rebuilt from the studs. The building Alfred was hanging off of was presumably next in line for such refurbishment. Older and uninhabited, the blue collar workers who had once walked its rooms were long gone. Ivan suspected it would soon turn into a giant cupcake shop.

The building might have been  _slightly_  condemned, but the windows and doors were all mostly there so it couldn’t be that bad. Alfred had even jumped up and down on the bottom rung of the ladder a bit. It had held his weight with only a little bit of wiggle. Besides, he had been climbing a while and was almost there. Ivan stood at the base of the stairs, nervous fingers pinching the space around his collar where a scarf normally draped. He watched Alfred’s shiny red sneakers squeak cautiously upwards.

“I just…I have a bad feeling about this,  _solnyshko_.”

“You said that about the deep fried turkey experiment!”

“I still don’t think we should have done that in the apartment.”

“Delicious though.”

Alfred nodded to himself. It had taken them a week to eat all of it. Turkey sandwiches, turkey casserole, turkey piroshki, turkey burritos… Delicious until Ivan had introduced Alfred to turkey kholodets. He wrinkled his nose involuntarily as he remembered how it jiggled. But now he was within arm’s reach of his goal and turkey jello was just a distant memory.

The whole thing probably would have gone better if it hadn’t just rained.

Alfred reached out with one arm to grab the scrap of silk. It was still moving slightly in the wind, and he lurched forward to snatch it before it floated away again. His sneakers were flashy, but not very functional, and they slipped on the wet rungs under his feet.

Four floors up from the cement below, he was lucky he was still holding on with one arm. 

“ _Fredik_ _!_ ”

The lurching motion he was already halfway into slammed his side into the metal barrier between him and the brick wall. The breath was knocked out of him and his shoulder made an  _oh god that’s probably not a good sign_ pop as it bore his weight and the brunt of his impact. He even managed to crack his head against the wall.

He had won though.

Alfred wheezed out a broken “got it!” that Ivan probably couldn’t hear as he waved the scarf with his free hand. Below him, Ivan wasn’t speaking in English any longer, but had been reduced to an impressive stream of Russian profanity.

“I can—” Alfred started.

“Don’t you move! I’m coming up!”

Alfred kicked his way back towards the ladder and slid down to the nearest landing, catching his breath once he got his feet on a solid footing. He promptly lost it again when Ivan reached him and grabbed him in what was more of a death grip than a hug.

“—and I don’t even  _like_  that thing. It’s…what’s the word…it looks like bugs. Germs. You almost died for  _germs._ ”

 “Paisley?” Alfred asked.

“We are going to go home and then we are going to burn it.”

Alfred thought that was a bit of a waste, but wasn’t about to protest.

After all, even as the pain in his shoulder was making Ivan’s hug nearly unbearable, he had still gotten to be a hero for the man he loved. Alfred smiled and let himself relax into Ivan’s arms. It would probably be a while before they had both calmed down enough to begin the climb down. Beside his cheek, Ivan’s anxious ranting had melted into gentle words of love.


End file.
